Read the epitaphs of mr. and mrs. purkapile from the spoon river anthology and answer the question that follows. mrs. purkapile he ran away and was gone for a year. when he came home he told me the silly story of being kidnapped by pirates on lake michigan and kept in chains so he could not write me. i pretended to believe it, though i knew very well what he was doing, and that he met the milliner, mrs. williams, now and then when she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. but a promise is a promise and marriage is marriage, and out of respect for my own character i refused to be drawn into a divorce by the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired of his marital vow and duty. mr. purkapile she loved me. oh! how she loved me i never had a chance to escape from the day she first saw me. but then after we were married i t

i dont really know i can try

in the problem you wrote said that the taxi charges $0.070 per mile(which would be 7 cents per mile), but then in your suggested equation you have it as $0.70 per mile (which is 70 cents per mile).

the latter seems more realistic, so i will assume that the taxi costs $5.00 and charges $0.70 per mile with tolls costing an additional $3.50. and it asks you to find how far you can travel on $36.50.

let x the number of miles traveled. since the taxi charges $0.70 per mile, multiplying this by the miles traveled (x) will yield the cost of the taxi ride as far as how far it took you. then adding this amount to the cost of the taxi ($5.00) and the additional cost for the tolls ($3.50) will give you the total cost of the taxi ride ($36.50)

that is,

            (0.70)x + 5.00 + 3.50 = 36.50

adding the like terms on the left-hand side of this equation, we arrive at the following:

            (0.70)x + 8.50 = 36.50

subtracting 8.50 from both sides of the equation, we get:

            (0.70)x = 28.00

to solve for x, divide both sides of the equation above by the coefficient of x (that being, 0.70):

            x = 40

thus, you can travel up to 40 miles on $36.50

the answer that is correct is the last option.